Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country
B.J. Hollars
University of Nebraska Press $19.95
Reviewed by Adrian KoesterS
Serious and tongue-in-cheek—or perhaps wry with a lifted eyebrow that defies interpretation—B. J. Hollars’s Midwestern Strange brings us, well, the strange. In part inspired by an incident that wouldn’t leave him alone, he set out to show that “the strange” can be found even in Flyover Country: “Trust me, the Midwest is just as murky and mysterious as the next place. Perhaps more so given the limited airtime our stories receive” (3-4).
The conundrum he constantly returns to is, how do we know? And, why should we bother trying to know? He bothered with reports of UFOs, uncanny creatures, and “space pancakes” (“If there is a food less befitting than pancakes to commemorate a historic meeting between humans and extra-terrestrials, I am unaware of it” [75]), just so that he might “. . . offer a closer examination of the stories themselves, and through them, learn more about why they fascinate us as individuals and society-at-large” (7).
Each chapter includes the phenomenon’s name, scientific name (most commonly “Defies Classification”), location, description and field notes, witness testimony, and conclusion (most often “Unsolved”). It’s interesting to see that there is only one obvious huckster in the bunch, what Wisconsin folks know as The Hodag, that someone or other promotes anew in each generation, sort of like a weird Dread Pirate Roberts.
The others he finds more credible, not the least because their reporters are just not the kind who run around “wallowing in the weird.” And there’s a price to that wallowing, as he tells us after a year: “. . . I now know the downside: . . . when you embrace the strange too tightly, there’s a chance it embraces you back” (192). He settles for a spectator’s seat, fascination intact.
Midwestern Strange is highly recommended for its perspective (as we say in the Midwest, “it’s different”), but also for its satisfying prose. Hollars is a beautiful writer who entranced me with deftness of style from the formal to the unceremonious. And I agree with him that in the end, “Our greatest mystery is our capacity for wonder” (198).
Adrian Koesters is a poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer whose most recent work is the novel, Miraculous Medal (May 2020). She has two books of poetry, Many Parishes and Three Days with the Long Moon, both published by BrickHouse Books. Her short meditation on trauma and prayer, Healing Mysteries, was published by Paulist Press, and her work has been published in The Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, Berkeley Review, and many others. Adrian holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA in poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska.